


Three Eggs in a Cold Volcano

by ckret2



Series: Red Sprite & the Golden Ones (Rodorah slowburn oneshots) [7]
Category: Godzilla (2014), Godzilla - All Media Types, Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Character Study, Interspecies Relationship(s), Language Barrier, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 18:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20856323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: Rodan didn't expect Ghidorah to follow him home. Just one in a long list of things he didn't expect them to do. And the longer Ghidorah watches Rodan recover, the more time Rodan has to think about how odd they are—and try to figure out why it is that he and they are so different from each other. (But then, nobody has bothered to tell Rodan that Ghidorah isn't another member of his species—much less that they’re alien.)





	Three Eggs in a Cold Volcano

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an ongoing series of Rodorah one-shots. If you haven’t read the others, here’s all the context you need: Ghidorah yielded to Godzilla in order to go help the injured Rodan; Rodan thinks Ghidorah is a member of his species because he’s never seen another Rodan before and figures Ghidorah is close enough; and fics from Rodan's perspective call him "Nido" because members of his species name themselves after their home volcanoes, and his is El Nido del Demonio.
> 
> Originally published July 7 on tumblr.

Nido was confused. Not unhappy, but confused.

He’d spent most of the last few days asleep. Half submerged in his volcano, exhausted, letting the crumbled dust he’d used to temporarily scab over his chest wound dissolve to be replaced by volcanic rock.

And the whole time, there had been the golden one. Sometimes sleeping, sometimes exploring the island below, sometimes circling the volcano and fussing at the little creatures around it. But usually watching. Perched just outside the volcano, clinging to the rim instead of climbing in. Patient while Nido recovered from the damage caused when Infant had paralyzed him. The only reason Nido had gotten paralyzed in the _first_ place was to give the golden one a shot at winning his fight, only for the golden one to surrender. It honestly stung for his injury to be rendered pointless; but then, the golden one had surrendered _because_ Nido had gotten injured, which was…

Hm.

Which was something.

Nido wasn’t sure _what_ it was yet, but it was something. It embarrassed him; but it also made him feel valuable.

Being constantly watched was odd. Nido felt like he should be doing something. Performing, maybe. Flying in loops and spirals, maybe showing off how many trees he could blow over at once. Demonstrating how sharp his talons and beak were. Not wallowing in his nest, tired and sore, trying to remember to stretch his wings every once in a while as his wound healed and the last of Infant’s venom worked its way out of his system. But the golden one didn’t seem to be irritated or bored. He didn’t try to nudge Nido into doing more. He just watched.

And Nido didn’t know what to make of that.

When he'd pledged himself to the golden one, he’d expected that would mean following him wherever he wanted to go. Instead, by now the golden one had spent more time following _him_. Even with Nido’s injury, he never would have expected the golden one to wait for Nido to fly back to his _own_ home, much less politely follow along. He would have expected the golden one to either abandon him for no longer being the lean mean fighting machine he’d been when they met, or insist that they go to wherever the golden one’s nest was to recuperate.

This permissiveness the golden one had offered him wasn’t a _bad_ thing. Nido was grateful that he’d gotten to recover in his own nest, in lava that smelled like his skin and on an island whose coast was as familiar to him as his own name. But it struck him as very strange that the golden one hadn’t taken Nido to _his_ volcano.

What did it mean that he _hadn’t_?

Was it because he cared that Nido got to recover in his own lava, even at the cost of getting to go to his own home? Did he think Nido was worth the investment—that the added strength Nido would gain from getting to recover in his own volcano made up for the time the golden one lost defending his own territory? Or was he watching over Nido to be kind, as a thank you for fighting on his behalf, but wanted to make it clear that he no longer liked him enough to take him home? Or—was it because they _couldn’t_ go to the golden one’s volcano? Was there something wrong with it? Had his volcano been destroyed? Or gone cold?

What if his volcano _had_ gone cold?

When the golden one wasn’t watching Nido, Nido was watching him—crawling around the island on all fours like his wings were legs, blunt snouts sniffing at irregularities in the dried lava that had rolled out when Nido woke up. The more Nido looked at him, the more strange he seemed. And he wondered if that _could_ be caused by a cold volcano.

There was the fact that he had three heads, of course—the most obvious oddity. Nido had heard of eggs having two yolks, but usually that meant two hatchlings—and usually at least one of them dead. It didn’t mean two heads. Certainly not _three._ Maybe yolks could fuse together for warmth if a volcano was going cold? Or maybe there had been three eggs at the start, but they’d been put together in one volcano (something Nido knew you should _never_ do) and when the magma had melted the shells, the flaplings had fused together—but the strain of incubating three had killed the volcano?

Certainly, a cold volcano would explain why the golden one didn’t have a normal layer of rock for armor. His skin must be so thin, made of little plates of gold as it was. Nido wondered if he himself would be golden too if he didn’t have a living volcano to bathe in. The golden one’s wings were so skinny that, when the sunlight was behind him, Nido could almost see through them. With no real armor, dI’d it hurt for him to be touched? It hurt for Nido just to have a bit of rock scraped off, never mind imagining if he had no rock at all.

Perhaps a cold volcano would even explain why the golden one didn’t seem to _burn_ like he should. As thin as his skin was, Nido should be able to see his fire blazing in him at all times, the magma coursing through his body. But there was none. And although Nido had only been touched by him a couple of times, it was enough to tell how cold he was. Had he gone cold along with his volcano? Was he all hardened stone on the inside instead of the outside? Was it possible to live without fire? Was that why he had lightning instead, thin wheezes of a weaker fire that was just enough to keep him alive but didn’t constantly blaze?

And yet, for all the golden one’s weaknesses, his thin skin and stone blood and egg mutations—he still towered over Nido. He still kicked up winds like Nido could never dream of. He still completely wrecked Nido in combat—completely wrecked _everyone_ in combat. His battle prowess was even more impressive considering the disadvantages he must have overcome to develop it.

If the golden one wanted to live in Nido’s volcano, he’d let him. It was tragic that he’d had to live in the cold so long without a proper home. And if they curled up close, there was room in the caldera for two.

When the golden one returned from frightening off a flock of those annoying little silver birds with high whining cries that seemed to be everywhere these days, Nido pulled himself up to the rim and said, "Come in. My volcano is your volcano.“

Most of the time, he found that speech wasn’t necessary. He lived alone, after all; and he was the only one of his kind. So he was fairly sure that this was the very first time he’d _said_ something to the golden one, rather than cawing and calling to him—sounds with meanings but without definitions. And yet, when the golden one looked at him with eyes that didn’t change, completely uncomprehending—so blank it was as if he didn’t realize there was anything _to_ comprehend—somehow, Nido wasn’t surprised. Somehow, he’d known the golden one wouldn’t understand.

He was so quiet, after all, for someone to whom Nido had given permission to command him. He only rarely made cries, and at that only ones that carried emotions rather than orders. He didn’t tell him what to do, but stared and waited for him to figure it out. At most, sometimes he gestured. Never caws that carried meanings, never words that carried definitions. Of course this lonely fighter without so much as a volcano didn’t understand Nido. How long had it taken Nido himself to learn his own kind’s language from other species?

He’d understand eventually, Nido was sure. There were a million different ways for people to communicate, and they only needed to find one that they both understood. Nido would invite the golden one into his volcano then.

And someday, Nido wanted to see the dead volcano that the golden one had come from.

Someday, he wanted to learn his name.

**Author's Note:**

> Original post [here](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/186110094162/three-eggs-in-a-cold-volcano). Feel free to reblog/comment there. (Or comment here!)


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